Kate Bush - "Never For Ever" (1980)

This was Miss Bush's third album and first full length album she produced herself (along with Jon Kelly). I purchased this album in my late teens and have always experienced it as belonging to the middle region of Kate's creations. Overall it’s a good album, there are some really beautiful songs, at the same time there are albums with Kate which are even better. And some which are worse. Kind of like a football team in the second division.

This is (so far) the only Kate Bush album without a title track (ie, there is no song on the album called Never For Ever) and it’s the first album where Kate used drum machines and synthesizers.

Personally I think the album in many ways is a step forward from the previous Lionheart, this goes for the quality of the songs, the sound and the production. In other words, the entire album. It also contains some tracks that are not songs of the more traditional verse-chorus structure but leans more towards mood creators, such as Delius and Night Scented Stock. Even if Kate in many ways had always been an innovative and progressive artists songs had on the previous two albums still been more traditionally structured. On Never For Ever she seems to visit some new ground, maybe it's because of her newfound freedom as a producer.

It was the first album by a female solo artist in England which debuted as number one in the charts, and the first album ever by a female solo artist to become number one in England. This may sound strange, it was already 1980, but before acts like Diana Ross & The Supremes had been number one, but strictly speaking this was a band. Furthermore, it was a compilation, like a Greatest Hits. Similarly, Barbara Streisand had been number one with a Greatest Hits. But Kate was the first woman who became number one with an original album. This album is historical in this way.

Just as I always felt this is an average Kate album, I’ve listened to it on an average intensity. But I should clarify that I like, more or less, all of Kate's albums and she is one of my favourite artists. So an average album by Kate Bush is still a very good album. And the song Army Dreamers has always been one of my absolute Kate Bush favourites. Breathing is another favourite song from the album which is about the cheerful subject of nuclear fallout experienced by a baby inside the mother's womb.

The album got different cover in Japan as the European one was a little too daring. You can’t have a woman on the cover from whom it flies out a lot of birds from beneath her ​​skirt. Instead they magnified one part of the picture (not the skirt). It can also be mentioned that Roy Harper does some backing vocals on the album. Babooshka was the best-selling single and peaked at number five on the charts, personally, I have never really liked that song.

Favorite Songs

Army Dreamers

Breathing

Tracklist

Side A

1. Babooshka 3:20

2. Delius (Song Of Summer) 2:51

3. Blow Away (For Bill) 3:33

4. All We Ever Look For 3:47

5. Egypt 4:10

Side B

1. The Wedding List 4:15

2. Violin 3:15

3. The Infant Kiss 2:50

4. Night Scented Stock 00:51

5. Army Dreamers 2:55

6. Breathing 5:29

Rolling Stones - "Their Satanic Majesties Request" (1967)

If you make life simple you can say that this record divides Stones fans into two categories - hate or love. Sure, there are certainly those who also are left relatively untouched, but in texts such as this one it's important to polarize! I think the Rolling Stones are an OK band, but I can't identify myself as a fan, maybe that's why I think this is a really good album. Love? Maybe not, but still a strong affection.

This was Stone's detour into the psychedelic landscape and they temporarily left their usual blues-based, more dirty, rockn'roll. A lot of people dismiss the album as a poor attempt to respond to the Beatles' Sgt Pepper that was released earlier that year. Some of the songs are not very good and doesn't feel "genuinly psychedelic", with that I mean that the psychedelic touch feels kind of glued on, "just because". In these songs I feel that the band tries to do something they're not really in to. At the same time there are some really beautiful and classic tracks on the album, such as She's a Rainbow and 2000 Light Years From Home. In my world the good songs absolutely outweigh the bad ones. Another song worth mentioning is the 2000 Man, a good song that KISS made a cover of 1979.

The album's titel is a play on the words in British passports, "Her Britannic Majesty requests and Requires ...."

The recording of the album was rather chaotic. It lasted from February to October, and was interrupted periodically by the trials of some band members because of drug possession. The band members (when they felt like showing up) brought lots of friends to the studio and you never knew who would show up. It went so far that the producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham finally gave up and left the recording. The consequence of this was that Their Satanic ... is the only self-produced Stones album.

The band experimented with synthesizers, strange sounds and new instruments. John Paul Jones made the string arrangements and Paul McCartney and John Lennon sang backing vocals on Sing This All Together (but it's not a good song, anyway).

Mick Jagger says: "There's a lot of rubbish on Satanic Majesties. Just too much time on our hands, too many drugs, no producer to tell us, 'Enough already, thank you very much, now can we get just get on with this song?' Anyone let loose in the studio will produce stuff like that. There was simply too much hanging around .”

 The original release had a 3D image on the cover which was later transformed into an ordinary image due to high costs. According to people I talked to in stores for used records one must be prepared to pay over $150 for a record with the original cover, and according to one man there's supposed to be an edition with a silk ribbon on. For this you must pay at least $1500, according to the same man. Original release looked like this (you must imagine the 3D effect):

I have an album with a different cover, it's a French re-release made ​​at a later date, I am however not sure what year. The name of this series of re-releases is "L'age d'or des Rolling Stones" which translates to "the Rolling Stones golden years." Their Satanic ... is vol. 8 in this series. Decca made this re-release (who also released the original album).

I let Mick Jagger conclude:
“There's two good songs on it: She's A Rainbow, and 2000 Light Years from Home. The rest of them are nonsense... I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it. ”

Anyway, I think it's a good album.


Favorite Songs
Citadel
She's a Rainbow
2000 Light years From Home


Tracklist
Side A
1. Sing This All Together 3:46
2. Citadel 2:50
3. In Another Country 3:13
4. 2000 Man 3:05
5. Sing This All Together (See What Happens) 7:58

Side B
1. She's a Rainbow 4:35
2. The Lantern 4:24
3. Gompa 5:12
4. 2000 Light years From Home 4:45
5. On With the Show 3:40